February 27-28, 2024 -- Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas

Radio traffic between first responders in Hemphill County, Texas, shows the determined effort to protect residents and homes Tuesday from the fast-spreading Smokehouse Creek Fire threatening the area around the town of Canadian.

“If y’all can make it through there, I could use you in town," a man says Tuesday on one call, according to the Hemphill Volunteer Fire channel on Broadcastify. "We’ve got (inaudible) houses burning."

In some cases, firefighters could be heard requesting units to respond to a resident’s house by name.

“I need a truck’s assistance here at (resident’s name) house … The house is OK, but the deck’s on fire. We’re trying to get the deck knocked out,” the firefighter says.

Firefighters responded to reports of multiple trapped people, including an elderly couple who told authorities that they had fire in their yard, but that neither of them were able to drive.

Some homes burned in the Canadian area, officials have said, adding they still were assessing the damage Wednesday. Evacuations and road closures in Canadian were lifted as of early Wednesday afternoon, according to InciWeb, a clearinghouse for US fire information.

A sudden shift of wind direction in the Texas Panhandle this week contributed to the explosion in size of the Smokehouse Creek wildfire, which has burned at least 850,000 acres, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.

“Wind was coming straight out of the north and made just this massive wall of fire moving across the landscape,” spokesperson Adam Turner told CNN Wednesday.

Local communities have confirmed a number of homes destroyed, but Turner said there are no confirmed deaths. Calmer winds are helping efforts to hold the line on the fire Wednesday, and firefighters are using that opportunity to prepare for stronger gusts later this week.

“When the winds do pick back up this weekend, we will have people, resources, all kinds of things here ready to go,” Turner said. That will include firefighting aircraft, which he expects to arrive in the region by Friday.

An active firefight could rage on for days as fires continue to grow and with more adverse weather on the horizon.

“We don’t have all the fires out. We are still currently fighting fires,” Troy Schwiegerath, Emergency Management Coordinator for City of Pampa and Gray County Texas told CNN.

Pampa and Gray County are located northeast of Amarillo.

“It’s going to burn forever. We’ve going to have three more days of fire,” Troy said.

Schwiegerath says the Texas Forest Service is there in en mass helping fight the fires.

“Thank God the winds stopped,” Troy said. He says firefighters were able to get a plan together and save the city of Pampa last night. Other towns weren’t so lucky. 

There are no injuries or deaths in Gray County, Schwiegerath said. It will take days to get an accurate count on what has burned, he said.

“We lost cattle, we lost grass, we lost a fence,” Schwiegerath said. “We just had a meeting this morning to come together, city and County officials. We’re trying to get organized.” 

Troy says local leaders are trying to set up a system to receive donations. 

“We need cash donations. Feed and hay. Fencing material type,” Troy said. 

The cattle industry is big in Gray County. Troy says they have no idea how many cattle were lost to the fires. 

Fires have destroyed at least 13 homes in Oklahoma, according to the state's emergency management office. Some wildfires burning in the Texas Panhandle crossed into Oklahoma Tuesday as they grew explosively.

The 13 homes burned in the following counties:

There are no active evacuations in the state Wednesday, Oklahoma Emergency Management spokesperson Keli Cain said.

New drone images show the aftermath of the wildfire that torched parts of Hutchinson County, Texas.

The Smokehouse Creek Fire, the largest among at least five other active fires in the Texas Panhandle, continues to burn uncontained, leaving charred homes and buildings in its wake.

But officials say the images revealed something else: a 7-mile prescribed burn that was conducted a few months ago. Burning parts of the land on purpose, known as controlled or prescribed burn, can help future wildfires from spreading.

Officials with the City of Borger's Office of Emergency Management say the prescribed burn "prevented the fire flank from spreading" into the southern parts of the town, including Meadowlark, Country Club and Bunavista areas.

"As much damage as we do have, our proactive efforts did prevent even more," Hutchinson officials said in a Facebook post.

Wildfires in Texas and Oklahoma have burned so much land that the scorched ground left behind is visible from space.

Satellite imagery captured burn scars stretching from the Texas Panhandle into western Oklahoma Wednesday afternoon, showing just how much carnage the blazes have already wrought, even as fires continue to burn. 

Burn scars are often a combination of burned plant life, debris and an altered layer of soil. In the satellite imagery above, the burn scar appears an ashen charcoal gray and black against the brown ground surrounding it.

Video credit: Greenville-Fire Rescue, Facebook

A dramatic video shows the moment a fire crew drove into the heart of the flames of the massive Smokehouse Creek fire Tuesday.

Towering flames lap at the sides of a bridge as they plow forward. A fire whirl pirouettes its way toward the vehicle -- a sign of how intense the conditions were inside the fire zone.

Fire whirls form when the air near the ground gets superheated and rises quickly into strong swirling winds, causing a column of fire to rotate around it.

Fire whirls are one of the criteria that meteorologists use to define extreme fire behavior because they help accelerate the spread of flames to new areas, and in their most intense form, as a fire tornado, can cause wind-related destruction much like a tornado.

Nearly half of Texas could see clouds with a touch of smoky haze Wednesday afternoon from the wildfires raging across the Texas Panhandle, with some cities already seeing poor air quality as the smoke tracks southward. 

The air pollution in Lubbock rose to unhealthy levels on Tuesday, but then improved slightly to a level that’s unhealthy specifically for sensitive groups — like the elderly, young children and those with respiratory issues, according to IQAir.

Smoke is forecast to push farther south over much of western Texas and reach parts of northern Mexico Wednesday afternoon. Then the wind direction will shift Wednesday evening, clearing the air for much of Texas -- with the exception of the Panhandle.

Overnight, dense smoke may spread north and choke the air in parts of the Oklahoma Panhandle and western Kansas.

Wildfire smoke contains very tiny particulate matter, or PM2.5 — a tiny air pollutant that when inhaled can travel deep into lung tissue and enter the bloodstream. It comes from sources like the combustion of fossil fuels, dust storms and wildfires, and has been linked to a number of health problems including asthma, heart disease and other respiratory illnesses. 

Millions of people die each year from air pollution-related issues. In 2016, around 4.2 million premature deaths were associated with fine particulate matter, according to the World Health Organization. A recent study also found that the annual exposure to wildfire smoke results in more than 30,000 deaths across the 43 countries analyzed in the study. 

A 30-year resident of Fritch, Texas – one of the hardest hit communities from the panhandle’s wildfires – says he was astonished by the speed of the destruction.

Williams’ house still stands, but he saw neighbors lose their homes.

“It all went up in less than a half hour once the fire got to us,” Williams said. “The [Department of Public Safety] got everybody out so we couldn’t watch it happen. We probably got back to our neighborhood by 5 or 6 p.m. yesterday, and by then, four homes across the street were completely gone.”